A Credit Card Machine with Built-In Ambition

In this article, you’ll learn:

The advantages of using a PoS mobile service

A cost-benefit analysis of an EMV credit card machine

How SumUp Card Readers protect your clients’ data

A credit card machine that charges no flat fees yet travels in your pocket is more than a mere fantasy. In fact, a processor with precisely those traits could even send your profits soaring if it has enough software compatibility to enhance your marketing and reduce your staffing needs.

If that sounds too good to be true, you’ve not stumbled on SumUp, the credit card machine for small business that provides every Point of Sale (POS) service a growing company needs to transform into a retail giant.

Credit card processing can be approached without much thought if you’re a big business with an even bigger expense account to support your freedom. If you own a small or mobile business, you need to think a lot harder about your approach, but this doesn’t have to relegate you to a fee-heavy processor.

Your POS strategy is only restrictive if you have the wrong service provider.

Today’s processors must, of course, be EMV-compliant, but new entrepreneurs need mobile credit card machines that do more than the bare minimum: There should be no revenue requirements to limit the scalability of your processing power and no list of processing fees longer than your business’ monthly general ledger.

Choose a greedy processing firm and you’ll become weighed down by per-transaction verification fees, gateway and statement charges, and a percentage dollar charge on every sale.

Fortunately, the power of choice has shifted away from banks to third party middlemen, so competitive terms have become a reality.

You no longer need to spend more on your card processing than you do on your banking.

The Basics

EMV stands for Europay, Mastercard, and Visa, but the term represents credit and debit cards that carry their own computer chips. All data is held on that chip, which is almost impossible to counterfeit.

The United States’ liability shift is in full swing, which means that if you don’t have the capacity to process EMV cards, you will be held financially responsible for any fraud attached to the payments you process. The risk is extreme but easy to avoid.

Once you’ve moved beyond the old-fashioned credit card swipe machine, you will also need to protect against identity theft. Surprisingly, this is not a feature most processors offer, but SumUp does.

Small Does Not Equal Incomprehensive

In the past, if you wanted 24/7 support, affordable fees, and absolute security, you had to pay a pretty penny. These days, highly competitive processors are offering staunch security at a negligible cost to you, along with extra features to sweeten the deal.

What if your card machine had the power to:

restructure your PoS so that it kept your stock figures up to date

streamline your payouts?

reduce the hours spent on bookkeeping, and

give your marketers valuable information about your buyers?

And lastly, what if your wireless credit card machine encrypted your customers’ data without tying your sales staff to a cash register? Now that would be ideal. That is SumUp.

Understanding Credit Card Machine Rates

Cost-benefit analysis of EMV technology can only weigh in favor of chip and sign processing considering the millions that are lost to fraud each year, but fee profiles are not all made equal.

Debit rates for card processing average at 1.35%, but clients still need to pay their portion, which can be as much as 4%. Flagship services usually charge percentages of the sale on top of a flat fee of 19 to 30 cents per transaction. Monthly service fees and the like can raise your expenses considerably, but an inferior card machine comes with indirect costs as well:

Functionality that lacks intuitiveness can cost thousands in staff training.

Terminals sold at a flat rate can cost up to $1,000 upfront.

Machines that process cards sluggishly can cost you profits from lost sales.

A payment system that doesn’t travel is less streamlined and less efficient, obliterating your flexibility.

$8.6 billion was lost to credit and debit card fraud in 2014

Low-grade systems store critical data on the device, making it vulnerable to theft.

Where support is not provided 24 hours a day, lost sales aren’t always easy to regain.

When you’re looking at inferior processors, you’re unlikely to find a credit card machine for small business that is equally adept at running high volume and mobile payments. A fully scalable processor like SumUp is created specifically to suit a growing enterprise, so flexibility is built into every aspect of its design from processing technology to fee structures.

Your Credit Card Machine, Your Way

Until recently, Paypal was among the only so-called card processors that traveled. Although it’s technically not a credit card processor, it was one of the rare ways small businesses could process card payments made from across the country or even the world.

The industry has evolved, and now mobile credit card machines are stepping up to replace antiquated payment strategies.

Away from the online marketplace, the only flexible alternative was once a customized system, which carried enough expenses to leave you shivering under your desk in terror.

The solution isn’t as complex as you might think: a bespoke credit card machine for small business simply needs to charge a percentage of your sales so that your rates directly correlate with your revenue.
Your POS is incomplete without software to support your bookkeeping, so SumUp lets you export your data to Excel, which is compatible with a number of accounting and marketing applications. Such a processor mobilizes your business, allowing your point of sale to travel to the other side of the shop floor and the other side of the world.

A portable credit card machine can enhance your business model and even increase the size of your demographic.

Security Challenges

Your credit card machine is no longer just a processor. It records your clients’ data, and that means you must live up to privacy regulations unique to your industry. SumUp SumUp Card Readers protect businesses facing the following risks:

Medical institutions must live up to HIPAA privacy regulations that protect patient data. Not adhering to the policies will be considered a healthcare breach by The Department of Health.

As a financial services provider, you’re held to the standards of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Insurers are held to standards similar to those of HIPAA.

A violation of privacy laws can be enforced even in less-regulated sectors.

Since financial account numbers are considered sensitive data and thus more stringently monitored, any merchant processing cards needs to comply with the law.

Data protection is monitored by a number of different regulatory bodies, but it’s secured by one simple feature: end-to-end encryption. SumUp’s chip and signature machine encrypts data before transmitting it. It’s not rocket science, but it’s impressive nonetheless.

Myth Busting

People resist change, regardless of how positive it is. The only serious complaint U.S. consumers have levied against EMV processing has to do with the speed of payments, but the truth is actually quite easy to swallow.:

Most chip and signature readers process cards in only a few seconds, so you can look forward to shorter lines and happier customers. As technology improves these speeds will vie against those of foreign countries which are processing cards in under a second.

Merchants tend to think setting up their apps and readers requires the equivalent of a doctorate. Today’s best readers are like turnkey businesses: they operate the instant you begin to trade.

Apps are intuitive to install, and fee structures are uncluttered. Employees don’t even need to be trained to keep your internal security measures intact because your reader will do that for you automatically.

How it Works

SumUp’s Air Card Reader is as compact a reader as you’ll find. It communicates with mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets via Bluetooth. It uses your iOS or Android device’s keypad and travels well.

The fee structure is such that you can have multiple readers in operation simultaneously, and your employees can carry their own readers from door to door or table to table. A single-use transaction code is created for each payment and sent to the card issuer for verification.

A worthwhile reader should do more than merely process payments. It should make your POS procedure as fast, simple and secure as possible, always putting the customer first.

New banking infrastructure and the increasing availability of freeware are bringing a new level of convenience to merchants, who no longer have to design their systems from scratch. SumUp will take care of the complexity and hard work. You simply need to sit back and enjoy the convenience of your new device.

SumUp offers you the best solution in card payments. With SumUp, you can quickly and easily accept credit and debit card payments with your smartphone or tablet.

In Summary

POS mobile services do not have to be limited to big companies. Today enterprises of all sizes can access a relatively affordable, fast and secure POS system that ensures that you, as the merchant, are complying with privacy laws when processing credit cards. And with these POS mobile systems, merchants can now untie employees from traditional cash registers and formulate new business strategies, transforming customer service.